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Our future, our universe, and other weighty topics

Saturday, June 17, 2017

Nonsense in NatGeo's “Year Million”

The National
Geographic channel has a new TV series entitled “Year Million.” A
recent episode in the series was entitled “Never Say Die,” and
was about the prospects of human immortality. The episode was long
on slick visuals, and short on intelligence. The episode
presented the ideas that we will greatly extend human longevity by
using nanobots and genetic engineering, and that later people will
upload themselves into computers.

The episode
presented a simplistic view of biological life, one that is purely
mechanistic, epitomized by a person who said, "We are still
biologically hindered by the squishy computer in our heads.” The
assumptions seemed to be that biological life is merely some
mechanical phenomenon that humans can completely master through
technologies such as nanobots and genetic engineering. These
assumptions are quite dubious because of all the profound mysteries
involving biological life.

It is generally
admitted that we do not understand the origin of life. It is
generally admitted that we do not understand the mystery of
protein-folding (why proteins conveniently form into
three-dimensional shapes needed for our existence). It is generally
admitted that we do not understand the mysteries of morphogenesis,
how it is that a fertilized egg is able to progress to become a baby who then grows into a full-grown human. We also don't really understand the
origin of species, as the theory of evolution by natural selection is
merely a theory of accumulation rather than what we actually
need to explain the mountainous degrees of coordination, structural fine-tuning, and
functional coherence in our bodies: a theory of organization
explaining the arrival of the fittest, not just the survival of the
fittest. As discussed here, we also don't really understand where it is that the body
plans of organisms are stored, because DNA is a minimal “bare
bones” language unsuitable for describing three-dimensional body
plan blueprints; so while DNA might be storing a list of chemical
ingredients, it does not actually seem to have a specification of our
body plans.

We therefore have
every reason to suspect that biological life involves some mysterious
forces or factors very far beyond our understanding. If that is the case,
then the prospect for vastly increasing the human lifespan through
injecting humans with tiny robots called nanobots and tinkering with
DNA may be much less bright than many think.

But there is some
reasonable hope that genetic engineering or nanobots might extend the
human lifespan, so this part of the TV show wasn't nonsensical. The
show did become nonsensical when it discussed the very dubious
concept of mind uploading in a completely uncritical manner. Among
the reasons why mind uploading is such a dubious concept is that we
have no understanding of how a brain could even be storing memories
that last for decades, given all the rapid molecular turnover and
protein turnover that occurs in brains; and we have no idea of how
brains can generate abstract ideas. Mind uploading cannot possibly
work unless some reductionist model of consciousness and memory is
correct; and there are very good reasons (discussed here and in this series of posts) for
doubting that any such model is correct.

The show quoted
neuroscientist Michael Graziano, who made this very dogmatic
proclamation:

A
lot has to be done before we can figure out whether we can take a pattern
of connectivity from a brain and upload it or copy it. It's going to
happen; I'm positive of that. Everything's moving in that direction.

Graziano's certainty
on this matter is laughable. There is no basis for believing that
minds can ever be uploaded. There is no progress at all in mind
uploading. Instead of “everything's moving in that direction,”
the situation is actually, “nothing's moving in that direction.”
And why is Graziano saying he's sure it's going to happen, just after
saying, “A lot has to be done before we can figure out whether we
can take a pattern of
connectivity from a brain and upload it or copy it”? Those two
thoughts contradict each other.

The show then quotes
string physicist Michio Kaku, who nowadays seems to have his head
popping up on every science or futurism documentary put on television.
Kaku states, "Believe it or not, we can actually upload
memories, and record memories in mice.” This statement is false.
The actual claims that have been made by certain mice researchers
(researchers in optogenetics) is that memories in mice can be blocked
or activated. Such claims are not well founded, and are based on a
few doubtful studies using a dubious methodology. The studies
typically report weak levels of statistical significance. See here
for a discussion of the flaws in some of these studies.

Making claims about
mind uploading, the show's narrator says this:

Once
we shed our physical bodies, we will exist only as a computer copy of
our brains. It's hard to imagine exactly, but basically you'd be
digital information stored on a server.

The TV show assures
us that mind uploading is the key to eternal life. The narrator says
this:

But
when we start talking about immortality, that's a whole other can of
worms. If we really are serious about getting to forever-land, we'll
have to replace our carbon based human bodies and upload ourselves to
a super-computer.

The show then tells
us this existence will be like some afterlife heaven. We are told:

We're
talking about everlasting life in a digital paradise....All of
society will live digitally in a virtual world called the metaverse
that's a thousand times more intense than the one you live in now.

There are quite a
few reasons why such a thing is very unlikely to happen. First, the brain does not
store digital information, so the mind is very likely not something
that can be uploaded into a computer. Second, there is not the
slightest evidence that the brain uses any type of readable code to
store information. DNA uses the genetic code, something we can
understand and read. But we have zero knowledge of anything like a
brain code that we can use to read information from the brain. Nor
can we plausibly imagine how such a code could have originated, as it
would have to be something almost infinitely harder to explain than
the genetic code (the origin of which is very hard to explain).

Third,
you could never electronically capture the exact state of a
particular person's brain, even if you tried to use microscopic
nanobots to do such a thing. Imagine trying to exactly map every
synapse and neuron in a brain with nanobots. Each of the
brain-mapping nanobots would have to somehow be aware of its own
exact position in the brain, so it can record the exact position of
each neuron and brain connection it encounters. So if a nanobot comes
to a neuron that is 1.334526 centimeters from the left edge of the
skull, and 2.734538 centimeters from the right edge of the skull, and
5.292343 centimeters from the back of the skull, then those exact
coordinates must be recorded. But how can a microscopic nanobot do
that? You can't supply a microscopic nanobot with a little GPS system
allowing it to tell its position. So it would seem that nanobots are
completely unsuitable for any such job as mapping the exact physical
microscopic structure of an organ with billions of cells and synapses
packed together in a small space.

Then
there's the duplication problem. Imagine if there was a machine that
could scan your brain, and then upload your mind to a computer. Even
if that process was done perfectly, the computer would not have your
mind. It would instead have a copy of your mind. You may realize this
just by considering that if this uploading process didn't kill you,
and the computer with your “mind upload” existed at the same time
as you, there wouldn't be two you's. There would be one you, and a
copy of you living in the computer. If you then died after this
upload, it would not at all be true that you had survived death by
the fact that a copy of your mind was in the computer.

None of these
difficulties are discussed on the “Year Million” TV show. The
show presents mind uploading as a sure thing, ignoring all the
reasons for thinking that it can't ever happen. Not only did the TV
show present mind uploading as something that will likely happen;
the TV show assured us that mind uploading is the key to true
immortality – on the grounds that once you are living in a computer
server, you are guaranteed to live forever.

This is nonsensical,
because the programs running on computer servers sometimes crash and
stop working; the programs running on computer servers are sometimes
deliberately halted; and the computer servers themselves sometimes
crash, lose power, or are turned off. If you were living in a
computer server, there is no reason why you should be confident that
you will be around for more than a century or two.

After the father and daughter mind-uploaded

The next episode of
the “Year Million” TV series continued to be largely about mind
uploading, speaking as if this extremely doubtful idea was on solid
ground. There was also a pitch for the idea that we are already living inside computers. The “Year Million” TV series is on track to be the
silliest documentary series ever put on about the human future.

Given our very low
state of knowledge about the most basic riddles of biology, memory and
consciousness, fantasies of mind uploading are rather like the
fantasies of some boy who knows almost nothing about the contents of the
sun, but who fantasizes that he will one day reorganize the sun into
a shape and color more pleasing to him.

Copyright Notice

All posts on this blog are authored by Mark Mahin, and are protected by copyright. Copyright 2013-2014 by Mark Mahin. All rights reserved. Any resemblance between any fictional character and any real person is purely coincidental.